single persons, people
of all races and families
of every kind.
Sunday
Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 3
Jul 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons
Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links
In knowledge
lies greater and nearer presence of God
Reflections on the
lessons for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Deuteronomy 15:7-11 / Psalm 112
II Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-15 / Mark 5:22-24, 35b-43
On my way home from church last Sunday I turned on the car radio and heard an announcement that really surprised me. I guess I hadn't been reading the science section of the paper closely enough. Or maybe scientists had conspired to put a little media drama into an epic moment they saw coming for some time. But, I was as surprised as can be when I heard the announcer saying that sometime within the next day or two there would be an official proclamation that the entire human genome has been mapped. Stay tuned for late breaking news.
And then the next morning, there it was in a two-column headline above the fold on the front page of The New York Times. I don't know how big this news is. Mapping isn't necessarily understanding. But mapping is mapping. The paper said that this was an accomplishment as big as mapping the entire face of the planet. As big as the printing press. As big as anything that has ever happened in the whole length of history.
So now what? After the announcement? I am no scientist. I don't know where such knowledge can lead. I don't know, in fact, just how much knowledge this discovery represents. I don't know whether to be glad about it. Or scared of it.
That's pretty common, it seems. Reading the stories, I pick up more anxiety than excitement. Even the potential uses of the discovery are presented in spooky terms. It will probably change all kinds of things about medicine and family planning. But the editorial writers all seem to be terrified that the knowledge will lead to a time when only the rich will have access to life-saving genetic treatments. And a time when certain people can pick and choose designer children who look and talk and even behave the way the laboratory programs them to be.
There's a real commercial aspect to the discovery. But people seem to be terribly afraid that insurance companies and patent offices will -- as one National Public Radio reporter said -- "one day be charging you a monthly fee because they technically own your kidneys." No one seems to be feeling optimistic about what we now have that we never had before.
Discoveries that thrust us into a new world of knowledge and power have historically been very threatening. Scientific advances have a way of changing the way we have to see the world. And the custodians of religion, especially, can get downright hostile when that happens. The church made great noises when it was finally shown that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. Suddenly, we weren't the centerpiece of creation. The discovery of the New World. Gravity. Microbiology. The great advances of the 18th century. Evolution. All these things sent shockwaves through the human spirit when they came on the scene. And now here we are once again. Left only to imagine the extent of the impact that a discovery will have. This time, a new infinity of knowledge about our inner workings.
All surprises are unsettling, more or less. All discoveries. All new knowledge. It makes us rearrange our minds and our lives and rethink everything we'd taken for granted.
As the religious commentator and Episcopal priest Tom Ehrich said this week, "The genome mappers are messing with our grasp of reality. Knowing this much about humanity will shatter prejudices, superstitions, and conventional wisdom that were grounded more in self-protective surmise than in fact."
And whenever people are shattered, whenever neat and tidy systems fall apart, there's all kinds of empty space opened up within us and that empty space has to fill with something. Often, unfortunately, it's fear.
But for Christians -- and other people of faith -- the hope and promise is that the new space will fill up with something better: The presence and peace of God. More of God. More new kinds of experience of God.
A certain kind of person will decide that God is under attack from the demons of science. But people who know God even a little bit ought to know that God's enemy is not knowledge. The enemy force that makes war against God is ignorance. Every new discovery in the history of human thought and human faith has shown not that God is smaller than we thought. Just the opposite.
The new frontiers of the past that we now all take for granted have consistently shown that God is much larger than we ever suspected. God's immensity and mystery become more and more apparent with human progress. The God people once thought of as a tribal deity of revenge and favoritism just keeps on proving to be more and more universal and majestic.
In today's gospel, we're looking into a world that was extremely familiar with death. People knew all about it. What they had no place for in their world was something -- even something inexplicable -- that had power and victory over death. Jairus -- himself a teacher and a professor of religion -- found himself pushed to try anything when the thought of losing his daughter made a leap into the unknown seem less scary than what he was seeing in the world he lived in. He fell down before the Rabbi that seemed to have something new going on and begged for whatever help he could get. But soon his friends came along and said that it was all over. Not to bother the new teacher since the child was past saving now.
They had reached a boundary. Beyond that, there was nothing as far as they were concerned. That was that. But, the Bible says that Jesus saw beyond their boundary. And saw that fear was the force that kept the boundary and their blindness solidly fixed. He knew that they understood neither life nor death, but simply had found a way to live with their terror. And, intentionally or not, to make others join them there.
Jesus had more to show them. Literally or figuratively, I think it really doesn't matter much. To the people who were sure that the story was all written and only disaster lay ahead -- and to us as we move forward into new visions and new ways of living and know God and ourselves -- Jesus had only the gospel advice to give. "Do not fear," he said and says to us still, "only believe." Believe that beyond what we see and know, in our imperfect ways lies not chaos and danger, but rather the greater and nearer presence of God.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
© 2000 -Church of Our Saviour Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons
Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links
http://www.secaucus.org/oursaviourWebmaster - DRoberts@Secaucus.org